I usually stay out of class conflicts. We've all got to get along somehow. But this one seems to be so well played by the thieves it's impossible
for me to ignore.

I grew up in a mining area. One of my memories is of being stopped by an old, retired miner as I walked along a footpath carrying an empty bottle. I
was looking for a bin to get rid of the bottle. He thought I may have been one of the hooligans who smashed bottles in the underpass the footpath went
through.

He said, "You're not going to smash that bottle are you?" I said "No, I'm going to put it in a bin". Then he told me to listen to the birds.
"This world is a beautiful place" he said. "When I was working underground I almost never saw daylight in winter. I'd go down before sunrise and
come back up after sunset. You should enjoy the birds singing and the daylight."

Working in dangerous conditions. Seldom seeing daylight in winter. Then tricked out of their pensions.

Is this designed to be class war? Yet more divide and rule.

This underhand, disgraceful decision of covering over with disinformation in addition to the outright mendacious double dealing, over the pit
closure program, taken with, the with holding of pension scheme investment contributions disguised as a pension payment holiday was a well thought out
premeditated act to deceive and retaliate for the 1984/85 strike with the aim to punish the miners financially along with their families as well as
their communities all the way along to the grave.

It is believed the secret list of 75 mines earmarked for closure, a fact now disclosed as a truth placed firmly in the public domain, proved by the
hand writing of Mrs. Thatcher in the margins of Government documents was only stage 1, of a 2 or 3 stage plan to wipe out the mining of coal in the UK
as is now the case as a fact just as Mr A Scargill with the NUM predicted.

The pension payment holiday was taken with the Government having full knowledge that the coal industry would lose 75 mines in stage 1 of the pit
closure program. With the mineworkers together with most importantly the British public uninformed of the true harsh preparations regarding the number
of collieries to be closed.

The loss of the contributions into the pension scheme from the mineworkers’ weekly earnings from those 75 mines whose miners who would be cast out
of work most never to find another job, added to the resulting large scale loss of revenue to be injected into the MPS investment funds, which can
only be seen as a planned malevolent punitive action against the miners’ as well as their families finances. The pension contributions holiday
should never have been approved to take place while keeping undisclosed the future planned decline in contributions into the Miners Pension Scheme by
the closing of 75 mines.

We are left in no doubt the miners were to be punished financially through their pension scheme, into their retirement all the way to their deaths for
daring to stand up, to fight for their jobs, their children’s jobs their communities social cohesion, as well as for the downfall of the Heath
Government at the ballot box. The facts clearly show the secrecy as well as the misrepresentation as it was told to our nation including other elected
MP`s in the House of parliament. These truths show beyond a doubt that the UK Government acted punitively and with a deep seated hatred against a
sector of its own people.

Putting this into context, over the same period the Government spent over £124bn bailing out greedy and incompetent bankers with loan and
share purchases. We are talking about duping and robbing generations of working men. Men who risked their lives in the most dark and hellish places in
the bowels of the earth to provide the coal which was needed to keep our homes, hospitals and schools warm and the wheels of our industry turning both
in peace and war time.

Our miners literally paid for their pension fund with their blood and their sweat and many gave their lives for it. Almost every miner who ever worked
down a colliery will suffer from adverse health conditions with many suffering lung damage due to exposure to coal dust. Many older ex-miners suffer
painful and lingering deaths.This money was supposed to them and their families. One miner told me recently they are dying at the rate of 8,000 a
year.

This scheme was never going to be a risk for the Government because sadly our miners tend to have a short life expectancy. The Treasury FOI letter
really highlights the extent to which our miners and their families have been ripped off by successive Governments. Even Dick Turpin had the decency
to wear a mask.

The miners are screwed and any profession that did offer a good pension has long since stuffed it up, just look at the Police force. Hell they even
want the money from any inheritance you may get, case in point if your parents own a home and they become dependent on state health care they are
expected to sell the home to pay for nursing care!!!...

I do not think it is "hate crime", what it is I believe is the rich elite looking for anyway to get back the money that was earned during a lifetime
to line their own pockets. In the UK we are taxed on top of tax then pay a extra 20%. This is just one more way of shorting the little guy.

Best thing that can happen in the eyes of Government is you work a full 50-60 years then drop dead the day you go to claim your first retirement pay
out.

Here in the USA, social security turned into a tax. The savings plan to let you retire with dignity goes into the general fund with the general fund
giving the Social Security custodians IOUs. Mom was suing for disability after paying into the system for 40 years when she died from cancer. Dad
got 30k. It's a system to line lawyers pockets. Where does the money come from to take care of refugees?

You 'usually stay out of class conflicts'!!!!!! Do me a favour, your hatred of the group of people you call 'elite' is the central point of virtually
every post you make!

I'm glad you now class Facebook as a source of truth. Anyway, it's more a case that the majority of services within the public sector have seen
massive pension cuts, ask the police, fire service and also the Royal Mail for which the government had to make a level of provision. I, like tens of
thousands of others lost the right to a final salary pension when I retire as a result of this and I'm not a miner. Is it unjust? Certainly feels like
it when looking at the relative pittance my time with the RMG will provide me with, but is it unrealistic? That's a harder one to answer. Final salary
(that's a large part of the post you are referring to) puts a massive drain on finances of both government for public servants and companies for
private ones. The larger group of people you have to pay, and the longer they live, is a huge factor on the sustainability of a given service.

By the way, if you really want to rail about a particular government for this, you'd be better off looking at Gordon Browns tenure as Chancellor which
is when the gold was sold and pension funds raided. I know you may feel more comfortable blaming the tories, but on this one the actual source is
fairly clear.

originally posted by: neutronflux
Here in the USA, social security turned into a tax. The savings plan to let you retire with dignity goes into the general fund with the general fund
giving the Social Security custodians IOUs. Mom was suing for disability after paying into the system for 40 years when she died from cancer. Dad
got 30k. It's a system to line lawyers pockets. Where does the money come from to take care of refugees?

And Social Security is due to be exhausted by 2034 (just look it up)

And our 401Ks aren't a fantastic retirement option either because as the banks and powers get more desperate with their debt levels, they are trying
to lay groundwork to be able to confiscate these funds or gain "sponsorship" over 401Ks which would mean they can do sketchy things with our money in
the interests of "the better good"

The miner’s pensions are underwritten by the UK tax-payer and in return the pension pot surpluses are returned to the tax-payer. The miner’s
pension scheme (and we are talking about coal miner’s aren’t we) also guarantees inflation-linked increases et al, again underwritten by the
tax-payer.

The problem with all of this is that some people think it’s unfair, or rather they are still bitter and twisted that (coal) mining as an industry
has pretty much disappeared since the “class struggle” in the mid 1980’s. Bearing in mind that the miner’s strike was one faction of miners
against another, so not all miners were willing participants.

Another problem is the crass hypocrisy of the miner’s leaders, many of whom benefited from very lucrative deals when they themselves left their
jobs, courtesy of the NUM, the miner’s union. Scargill, the prime antagonist brought an accelerated end to coal mining by single headedly
destroying all goodwill and divided miners to such an extent that miner’s union broke up.

This is what happens when you practice socialism. When you pray to the alter of the all mighty government. If everyone just invested their own
money instead of giving it to the government, people would have more, and the government would have less, but that's the problem. The more left
leaning government you "want" the more food(your money) it needs.

In America, you see the left, try to "vilify" wall street and any personal retirement founds. The sad part, some of the average people believe them

My great-grandfather died in a coal-mine collapse near Forrest City, PA. This happened at the beginning of the Great Depression. I have a real soft
spot for miners, Kester, and I really appreciate your anecdote about the old miner. Thanks for stirring the memories!

a reply to: paraphiYou are of course slightly mistaken in your reasoning. The MPS (mine-workers pension scheme) is one of the
richest in the world and as such the UK tax payer pays nothing towards it. The "scam" you are referring to is that the government guarantees the fund
ONLY if it goes under, they pay nothing. The likelihood of it going under is of me being the next messiah.
But for this "guarantee" the MPS pays the government approx. £80 million a year, depending how much PROFIT the scheme has made that year. But as the
years go by, yes there are less contributions, but the people drawing on this rich scheme are dying off so there are less and less drawing so the
scheme will get richer and richer and the government will want a bigger and bigger pay out.

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